Ruth Mace

Mace was born on 9 October 1961 in London, England to David Mace and Angela Mace. She was educated at South Hampstead High School, an all-girls independent school in South Hampstead, London, and at Westminster School, an independent school within the precincts of Westminster Abbey that has a mixed-sex sixth form. She studied zoology at Wadham College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1983 and a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1987.[1] Her doctoral thesis was titled "The dawn chorus: Behavioural organisation in the great tit (Parus major)".[3]

Having completed her doctorate, Mace began her academic career as a research fellow at Imperial College London; she held a NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship.[4] Then, from 1989 to 1991, she was a lecturer in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia.[1][4]

In 1991, Mace moved to the Department of Anthropology of University College London: she was a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer from 1991 to 1999, and Reader in Human Evolutionary Ecology from 1999 to 2004.[4] In 1994, having met Mark Pagel at University College, the two co-authored "The Comparative Method in Anthropology", that used phylogenetic methods to analyse human cultures, pioneering a new field of science — using evolutionary trees, or phylogenies, in anthropology, to explain human behaviour.[5]

In 2004, she was appointed Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology.[1] From 2005 to 2010, she was also Editor-in-Chief of Evolution and Human Behavior.[1] From 2018, she was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Evolutionary Human Sciences.[6] Since 2010, she has served as Head of Biological Anthropology at University College London.[4]

Mace's partner is Mark Pagel, professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Reading. Together they have two sons.[1]

In 2003, Mace gave the Curl Lecture, a prize lectureship of the Royal Anthropological Institute.[7] In 2008, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.[8]

• Milner-Gulland, E. J.; Mace, Ruth (1998). Conservation of Biological Resources: with case studies contributed by other authors. Oxford: Blackwell Science. ISBN 978-0865427389.
• Mace, Ruth; Holden, Clare J.; Shennan, Stephen, eds. (2005). The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach. London: UCL Press. ISBN 978-1844720996.
• Gillian, Bentley; Mace, Ruth, eds. (2009). Substitute Parents: Biological and Social Perspectives on Alloparenting in Human Societies. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1845451066.